BOSTON - They’ve been there, they’ve done that, and they can’t do it again. But the Bruins can try to keep it from happening to them.

Although much of the pre-series discussion about Detroit centers on the Red Wings’ storied, Original Six history, from their 11 Stanley Cups (third all-time) to their current streak of 23 straight post-season appearances, the Bruins are just as aware that their first-round playoff opponent is populated by a fairly large number of new characters.

It reminds grizzled old guys like David Krejci, who turns 28 in less than two weeks, of when he was a kid.

“It was mine and (Milan Lucic’s) first year,” Krejci said of that 2007-08 season. “We made the playoffs in the last position, and we pushed the No. 1 seed – it was Montreal – to Game 7.

“It was because we were young, and we didn’t care about anything. We were just working hard, and before we knew it, we were in Game 7.”

The Bruins, spent after extending the series with a 5-4 victory in an epic Game 6 at the TD Garden, fell 5-0 in Game 7, but they had established themselves as up-and-coming Stanley Cup contenders, and re-established themselves on the local sports scene after missing the playoffs each year since 2004.

The B’s now enter their seventh straight post-season with enough respect for the Red Wings that Krejci says, “I’m expecting this series to go seven games.” If it happens, though, he doesn’t think it should be because the Bruins have been surprised by a collection of young players having too much fun to be intimidated by facing the team with the NHL’s best record.

“We’ve talked about stuff like that already,” Krejci said. “We know they have some young guys over there who just want to play hockey. They can do the same thing to us that we did to Montreal a long time ago.”

Krejci (56 games) and Lucic (77), now long-time linemates, both had 27-point seasons as rookies, and were an immense help to a team that had lost Patrice Bergeron to a season-ending concussion after only 10 games, and which was only starting to build the depth the organization now boasts. The Bruins had only two 20-goal scorers (Marco Sturm, Chuck Kobasew), and one player – Marc Savard – with more than 60 points. Veterans like wingers Glen Murray and P-J Axelsson were nearing the ends of their careers, and journeymen like Glen Metropolit, Peter Schaefer, Jeremy Reich and Shane Hnidy had to play larger roles than expected.

“You just have to look at our (’07-08) roster,” coach Claude Julien said. “It was one of those years where talent was fairly low. Whatever talent we had had was extremely young. But we had a really good work ethic.”

Page 2 of 2 - Those Bruins, like this year’s Wings, had to fight to the end to qualify for the playoffs – especially after losing Savard briefly, to a cracked bone in his back, down the stretch. A 5-1-4 streak through the 81st of 82 games put them over the top.

Detroit, which qualified as the second of two wild cards in the Eastern Conference this year, has better overall depth than the ’07-08 Bruins, and wouldn’t have reached the playoffs without it. The Wings have lost everyone from stars (forwards Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk) to veteran role players (Dan Cleary) to key defensemen (Jonathan Ericsson) to injuries, but rookies like Riley Sheahan, Danny DeKeyser, Tomas Jurco and Luke Glendening seized full-time roles and sparked a late-season push. And Gustav Nyquist, who had to start the season in the AHL because of salary cap constraints, led Detroit with 28 goals, even though he wasn’t promoted until Nov. 21.

Datsyuk has returned to the lineup, and the Bruins expect Zetterberg (back injury) to surface at some point. But B’s general manager Peter Chiarelli, for one, might be just as wary of the kids who carried the Wings when they needed it. He saw back in ’07-08, after all, how much young players can mean to a team.

“They had the young guns that helped them get in,” Chiarelli said of the Red Wings. “You’ve heard about youthful enthusiasm and energizing a team – that’s what happened. They’ve helped energize the whole group.

“When you’ve got these kids that are fearless and don’t know the ramifications, they become dangerous as a group – and that’s what they are.”